


The Ritual

by shittershutter



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 13:53:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12772452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shittershutter/pseuds/shittershutter
Summary: It’s not a game, not quite. Something more sacred they share, like a ritual, and it stems from the time Gibson wouldn’t make a sound, not a peep, just the rustling of dry air leaving his mouth.





	The Ritual

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [【授翻】The Ritual](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12777624) by [psychomath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychomath/pseuds/psychomath)



> * Unbetad. Sorry.

The girl’s name is Margot. Tommy knows because he’s been scribbling her name on his palm for a while now. 

“Remember her name, I’ll marry her one day,” Alex tells him very seriously. The scars on his forehead run through the eyebrows giving them such a scowl-like unnatural arch Tommy can’t tell when the man is kidding anymore.

So he writes the name down just in case he needs it for a wedding card and accepts her help with washing the dishes as Alex is boasting about their wartime escapades to Gibson behind them.

She’s French, so it hurts her feelings Gibson hasn’t said a word yet, in his native tongue or otherwise. 

“He’s shy around new people,” Tommy tells her with what he hopes is a friendly smile. “Shy” is so inadequate to describe the condition Gibson’s in. “Tortured to the point he’d rather die than make a peep before he feels safe” is more like it but what kind of a dinner table story is that. Tommy’s been hiding his damaged hand in his sleeve the entire evening, too. She’s not a nurse for a change, this one. She won’t take it lightly. 

And all of this awkwardness is just a basic level. He hasn't even got into swearing to shoot Alex in the head that one time yet. To his credit, he didn’t mean it quite literally, but Alex wouldn’t lie the fuck down, the bandage around his head getting redder and redder, and the nurses were losing their patience with him. 

“Promise me,” Alex croaked, going limp against his arms immediately. “If it ever gets really bad…” And being the kind soul he was, Tommy did. 

He shakes the memory off and gives Margot another shiniest smile he’s capable of watching Gibson rubbing his ribs distractedly right behind her head, in the background. She doesn’t cry at the look of it at the very least, and that’s the progress. 

* * 

“Show me where it hurts,” Tommy says seriously attempting to straddle Gibson’s legs in one fluid motion while maintaining the eye contact. His bad leg doesn’t fully cooperate, and he falls forward instead, right into Gibson’s arms as the man catches him by the shoulders.

Tommy’s cheeks burn so hotly he is grateful for the relative darkness around them. 

He takes Gibson’s hand in his, broken fingers intertwining, and squeezes before receiving a light squeeze back. 

It’s not a game, not quite. Something more sacred they share, like a ritual, and it stems from the time Gibson wouldn’t make a sound, not a peep, just the rustling of dry air leaving his mouth. 

“Show me where it hurts,” Tommy would say and proceed with kissing him all over, from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes, holding onto his hand the entire time. Gibson would squeeze his palm at any tender spot; this is how Tommy would know, would get the physical sense of the other man without having a word of conversation. 

He kisses down his chest now, rubbing his nose against the soft hairs around the nipples, giving them a few playful licks before sliding down the hollows and the mounds of man’s ribs where he knows the pain resides. 

The two lighter squeezes follow, then the hard one when Tommy barely touches the ugliest scar right under the ribcage. 

“We’re going to get you the pills again, yeah?” he whispers against the softest flesh under the bellybutton. “You didn’t finish them the last time.”

Gibson rubs the back of his hand with his thumb in agreement before Tommy can slide lower to the parts of him that don't bother him at all, he knows for sure, at least not in a bad way. 

* * * 

He maybe tortures Gibson a little with tiny bites against the backs of his knees, and when he’s done with the entire body, the other man retaliates with turning him onto his belly and arranging his tense thighs on the pillow until he rests comfortably. 

Tommy doesn’t mind today. He would, most of the time, needing to see the man’s face to read him correctly at all times but he has a mouthful of Gibson’s taste still, nostrils full of his smell… He can take it like this now.

Gibson pushes the rib of his palm between Tommy’s cheeks lazily, rubbing, as a promise rather than a proper stimulation. I know damn well where you want me, it says. 

Sure as he is, Tommy still pushes his hips back rhythmically in confirmation and then forward to hump a pillow a bit. He is so hard from the moment the man touches him with intent; it feels like his erection is physically weighing him down, hot and heavy. 

They tell him he may never be able to get it up, not with the blood stagnation in his pelvic area, the pain and the mental component of it all. But the second Gibson kisses him for the first time, careful but so, so needy; the blood just rushes down, so fast Tommy feels lightheaded, his fragile balance knocked out of him altogether. 

So he humps the pillow to take the edge off, following what the fine tremors in his thighs tell him to do, and when Gibson’s chest presses to his back, heartbeat thundering through them both so strongly it makes Tommy’s teeth chatter, his limbs just give in. 

He lets Gibson hold him, one hand around his chest, the other stroking lazily through the stripe of hair down his belly, and he mewls pitifully for the other man to take him. Pushes his hips back, too, to get his point across. 

Gibson does, slowly and deliberately. Tommy can swear he feels the swell of the head breaching him and every vein running down the man’s cock that follows until the thick hair presses against his arse and they both freeze, bodies shivering with the same frequency. 

“Tommy,” Gibson rasps against the back of his neck. “Darling. Look at me.”

French words follow, tumbling, as the younger man turns his head until their eyes meet for a moment before their foreheads press together tightly and Gibson starts moving inside him. 

The pet names flow, soft as cotton, sticking to Tommy’s sweaty skin like Gibson’s thighs cling to the backs of his own. And he is only able to accept any of them when he has a cock up his arse so deep he has to drop his head from time to time to groan into the pillow. 

He’ll take the words like he takes the cock, relaxed and open. 

Not like that time when Gibson tells him he’s the one. “The one what?” Tommy blurts out stupidly chalking it all up to a language barrier until late at night the declaration’s meaning catches up with him. 

He digs his fingers into Gibson’s forearm a bit too harshly, but at least the hand has three nails only to wound the man with as his cock is tugged at slowly, just the way he likes. 

Now that he has the bed, the man to make love to in it and all the time in the world, he likes it slow. So slow he can taste each passing second on the very tip of the tongue as it slides along his own dry lips and every millimeter of Gibson’s flesh he can get his mouth on in this position. 

He stains Gibson’s palm as he comes against it, fucking through the loose fingers, and it feels like too much slickness, inside and out of him. His forehead drops to the pillow that is so blissfully cold against the inflamed skin he hums into it and lets the aftershocks rip through the body in distorted waves. 

Through it all, Tommy can feel Gibson moving around, his own back suddenly so cold as their bodies separate. He keeps his arse up, though. Partly because he needs some time for his bad leg to relax enough to straighten. But as Gibson’s come slides down his sack he also wants the man to see what he’s done to him. 

Gibson does, he can tell by the sharp intake of breath above and the long pause before the man wipes him thoroughly and helps him lie down. 

The whole situation calls for a sassy remark on Tommy’s part but his tongue is barely moving, and all he can do is grab the man’s wrist as soon as the arm snakes around his waist just so he has something to hold onto as he falls into a deep, dreamless sleep. 

* * 

He finds Alex awake in the kitchen in the early hours of the morning, slowly going through the remaining beer from the fridge. 

“Your sofa is too small for two people,” he accuses Tommy instead of a greeting, but Tommy is too busy lowering himself to the chair to flip him off. “Couldn’t sleep.”

"I'm releasing you from the oath,” he adds then, after a moment of consideration.

Alex has his trousers on, and that's it, the cigarette between his teeth, and he is looking above the tree line outside when he says the words. 

"... what?" Tommy latches to his beer bottle, the fruity notes of Alex's girl lipstick still around the rim. 

"The death oath. No need to have it looming when everything's good."

Tommy's brain hiccups around "good" but he takes a long moment to think about it. He tries the word on like he's tried Gibson's shirt on for the first time -- it doesn't really fit, but it makes him feel so warm. 

"I'm no longer obligated to blow your head off?" 

"No."

Tommy clicks his tongue in disappointment and leans back against the chair as relief floods his chest making him feel drowsier than the beer he drinks. 

"It's good, isn't it, Thomas?" Alex turns his head to look at him, the eyes Tommy dreamed to claw out once boring into him. "It's better."

"It's... better," Tommy agrees cautiously. Then chastises himself for being such a coward and corrects himself with a cough, as sheepish about it as Gibson would be, “It is fucking good.”

They sit in silence next to each other looking at the sky as they would when the ground was cold under their backs, and the bullets were flying quickly above their heads. Tommy would dream about seeing the peaceful sky once more, even for a moment, even as a brief flashback before the world around him would go dark forever. 

Now when he does, when he can have this view for himself as long as he wishes to, that "good" come back to his mind. He is too afraid to say it out loud still, horrified to keep it in his head for too long either, but with Alex's knee pressed against his, his head still intact, and with Gibson's sweat drying on his skin for a moment he allows himself to feel it.


End file.
